For by this time she had added another straw to the pile of rubbish in her mind: she would write him a letter. In it she would tell him that she was going to ... die, so that he could marry Lily and have Jacky! Then came the mental postscript, which would not, of course, be written; she would make it possible for him to marry Lily—and impossible for him to marry Edith! And by and by she got so close to her mean and noble purpose—a gift in one dead hand and a sword in the other!—that she began to think of ways and means. How could she die? She couldn't buy morphine without a prescription, and she couldn't possibly get a prescription. But there were other things that people did,—dreadful things! She knew she couldn't do anything "dreadful." Maurice had a revolver in his bureau drawer, upstairs—but she didn't know how to make it "go off"; and if she had known, she couldn't do it; it would be "dreadful." Well; a rope? No! Horrible! She had once seen a picture ... she shuddered at the memory of that picture. That was impossible! Sometimes any way—every way!—seemed impossible. Once, wandering aimlessly about the thawing back yard, she stood for a long time at the iron gate, staring at the glimmer, a block away, of the river—"our river," Maurice used to call it. But in town, "their" river—flowing!—flowing! was filmed with oil, and washed against slimy piles, and carried a hideous flotsam of human rubbish; once down below the bridge she had seen a drowned cat slopping back and forth among orange skins and straw bottle covers. The river, in town, was as "dreadful" as those other impossible things! Back in the meadows it was different—brown and clear where it rippled over shallows and lisped around that strip of clean sand, and darkly smooth out in the deep current;—the deep current? Why! that was possible! Of course there were "things" in the water that she might step on—slimy, creeping things!—which she was so afraid of. She remembered how afraid she had been that night on the mountain, of snakes. But the water was clean.
She must have stood there a long time; the maids, in the basement laundry, said afterward that they saw her, her white hands clutching the rusty bars of the gate, looking down toward the river, for nearly an hour. Then Bingo whined, and she went into the house to comfort him; and as she stroked him gently, she said, "Yes, ... our river would be possible." But she would get so wet! "My skirts would be wet ..."
So three days went by in profound preoccupation. Her mind was a battlefield, over which, back and forth, reeling and trampling, Love and Jealousy—old enemies but now allies!—flung themselves against Reason, which had no support but Fear. Each day Maurice's friendly letters arrived; one of them—as Jealousy began to rout Reason and Love to cast out Fear—she actually forgot to open! Mrs. Newbolt called her up on the telephone once, and said, "Come 'round to dinner; my new cook is pretty poor, but she's better than yours."
Eleanor said she had a little cold. "Cold?" said Mrs. Newbolt. "My gracious! don't come near me! I used to tell your dear uncle I was more afraid of a cold than I was of Satan! He said a cold was Satan; and I said—" Eleanor hung up the receiver.
So she was alone—and the wind blew, and the straws and leaves danced over that battlefield of her empty mind, and she said:
"I'll give him Jacky," and then she said, "Our river." And then she said, "But I must hurry!" He had written that he might reach home by the end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it—before he comes home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six, she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm. Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the glass: those gray hairs! ... Edith had called his attention to them so many years ago! It was a long time since it had been worth while to pull them out. ... All that morning she moved about the house like one in a dream. She was thinking what she would say in her letter to him, and wondering, now and then, vaguely, what it would be like, afterward? She ate no luncheon, though she sat down at the table. She just crumbled up a piece of bread; then rose, and went into the library to Maurice's desk... She sat there for a long time, making idle scratches on the blotting paper; her elbow on the desk, her forehead in her hand, she sat and scrawled his initials—and hers—and his. And then, after about an hour, she wrote:
... I want you to have Jacky. When I am dead you can get him, because you can marry Lily. Of course I oughtn't to have married you, but—
Here she paused for a long time.
I loved you. I'd rather she didn't call you Maurice. But I want you to have Jacky; so marry her, and you will have him. I am not jealous, you see. You won't call me jealous any more, will you? And, besides, I love little Jacky, too. See that he has music lessons.
Another pause... Many thoughts... Many straws and dead leaves... "Edith will never enter the house, if Lily is here—with Jacky.... Oh—I hate her."